5 Takeaways from Ariana Grande’s New Album, thank u, next

Last August, Ariana Grande was seemingly untouchable. She’d survived the 2017 bombing at her Manchester concert, handling the public trauma with grace. She had just released the glittering Sweetener, her most honest and innovative album to date. And she was engaged to Pete Davidson, a fact you couldn’t forget even if you wanted to. But everything came to a screeching halt in September. Ariana’s ex-beau Mac Miller was found dead from an accidental overdose. Her relationship with Pete deteriorated. She withdrew into the studio.

By November, Ariana was ready to show the world how she was coping. She released the supremely catchy gratitude bop “thank u, next,” and people were so shook by her emotional maturity, the song became Grande’s first No. 1 single. By the end of 2018, the singer was already hinting at her Sweetener follow-up, named for her zeitgeist-y hit. Now that thank u, next has arrived, here’s what you need to know going in.

Tributes to Mac and Pete

On the title track, Ariana name-drops her exes in one of the record’s most affecting lines: “For Pete, I’m so thankful/Wish I could say, ‘Thank you’ to Malcolm/’Cause he was an angel.” Ariana seems to address her relationships with the two men a little more subtly throughout the rest of the album—a theme she hinted at while teasing the project. Wistful second single “imagine,” she said, is about “a simple, beautiful love that is now (and forever) unattainable.” That, combined with Miller’s “imagine” tattoo and the song’s questioning lyrics, suggest a foregone conclusion. On “ghostin,” Grande sings about upsetting her partner because she’s crying over another guy—a plotline that matches up with the rumors surrounding her breakup with Davidson.

Ari the Rapper?

“My dream has always been to be—obviously not a rapper, but, like, to put out music in the way that a rapper does,” Grande said in a recent Billboard cover story. “It’s just like, ‘Bruh, I just want to fucking talk to my fans and sing and write music and drop it the way these boys do.’” Grande’s fluid strategy of rolling right from Sweetener to fire loosies to her next album definitely takes a page from hip-hop’s most prolific, but it’s arguable that Ari is also leaning into her rap persona on thank u, next. On the breakdown of “7 rings,” she launches into full-on bars, at one point interpolating a Biggie line. “Bad idea” ends with a chopped ‘n’ screwed-inspired outro, with Grande’s voice pitched and slowed down to emulate the Houston hip-hop remix style. Throughout the record, she uses “skr skr” and “yuh” ad-libs generously. And though she employs production from Max Martin, Swedish producer ILYA, L.A. hitmaker Tommy Brown, and other pop mainstays, they provide expensive-sounding beats that kinda sound like Atlanta trap don Lex Luger. The pivot to rap seems like a somewhat natural progression from Sweetener, where she flirted with rap flows and ad-libs in her melodies.

The “7 rings” controversy

As Ariana dips into hip-hop, she’s being met with concerns of cultural appropriation. (Yes, she’s a white woman—don’t let that deep tan fool you.) In the run-up to thank u, next, her single “7 rings” sparked minor controversy for its similarities to existing rap songs and its references to buying hair extensions. Princess Nokia jump-started the conversation, making a video of herself listening to “7 rings” right after playing her own song “Mine.” “Does that sound familiar to you? ’Cause that sound really familiar to me,” Nokia said in the Twitter clip. “Ain’t that the lil’ song I made about brown women and their hair? Hmmm... sounds about white.”

Soulja Boy also accused Grande of stealing his “swag,” due to the song’s similarities to his hit “Pretty Boy Swag.” Folks on Twitter pointed out that parts of “7 rings” sound like 2 Chainz’s “Spend It,” and the Atlanta rapper egged it on by comparing the pink mansion in the “7 rings” video to his own pink trap house. While Ariana didn’t respond to Nokia or Soulja, she enlisted 2 Chainz for a “7 rings” remix—a convenient way to side-step a comment and still promote her single. The cultural appropriation conversation took a weird turn when she tried to get a tattoo for “7 rings,” but ended up getting mis-translated Kanji that literally means “small charcoal grill” in Japanese. When she tried to fix the problem, she ended up with a tattoo that translates as “Japanese BBQ finger.” Girl.

Two throwback samples and no features

In the past, Ariana’s label Republic aggressively A&R’d her releases, pairing her with big-name rappers like Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Iggy Azalea, and more to get that R&B/rap radio single on lock. She manages that balance on her own this time around. The LP does feature two intriguing samples that add some extra color to the hyper-polished production. The blunt “fake smile” prominently features Stax soul singer Wendy Rene’s 1964 single “After Laughter (Comes Tears),” a favorite sample among rappers. (Wu-Tang Clan borrowed the song for their 1993 track “Tearz,” and Kendrick Lamar, Alicia Keys, and Metro Boomin have incorporated it since.) And on the more playful “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored,” Grande interpolates melodies from *NSYNC’s “It Makes Me Ill,” giving the closing track a heavy turn-of-the-millennium pop feel—a vibe that is definitely in the air right now.